usefor-article-07 May 2002
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8.4. Duties of a Serving Agent
A Serving Agent takes an article from a relaying or injecting agent
and files it in a "news database". It also provides an interface for
reading agents to access the news database. This database is normally
indexed by newsgroup with articles in each newsgroup identified by an
article-locater (usually in the form of a decimal number - see 6.16).
NOTE: Since control messages are often of interest, but should
not be displayed as normal articles in regular newsgroups, it is
common for serving agents to make them available in a pseudo-
newsgroup named "control" or in a pseudo-newsgroup in a sub-
hierarchy under "control." (e.g. "control.cancel").
A serving agent processes articles as follows:
1. It MUST verify the leftmost entry in the Path-header and then
prepend its own path-identity with a '/' path-delimiter, and
possibly also the verified path-identity of its source with a '?'
path-delimiter (5.6.2).
2. It MUST reject any article whose Date-header is stale (see 5.1).
3. It MUST reject any article that does not have the correct
mandatory headers (section 5) present, or which contains any
header that does not have legal contents.
4. It SHOULD reject any article that has already been sent to it (a
database of message identifiers of recent messages is usually kept
and matched against).
5. It SHOULD reject any article that matches an already received
cancel message (or an equivalent, Supersedes-header) issued by its
poster or by some other trusted entity.
6. It MUST reject any article without an Approved-header posted to
any moderated newsgroup which it is configured to receive, and it
MAY reject such articles for any newsgroup it knows be moderated.
7. It MUST remove any Xref-header (6.16) from each article. It then
MAY (and usually will) generate a fresh Xref-header.
8. Finally, it stores the article in its news database.
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#Diff to first older
--- ../usefor-article-06/Duties_of_a_Serving_Agent.out November 2001
+++ ../usefor-article-07/Duties_of_a_Serving_Agent.out May 2002
@@ -5,7 +5,6 @@
reading agents to access the news database. This database is normally
indexed by newsgroup with articles in each newsgroup identified by an
article-locater (usually in the form of a decimal number - see 6.16).
-
NOTE: Since control messages are often of interest, but should
not be displayed as normal articles in regular newsgroups, it is
common for serving agents to make them available in a pseudo-
@@ -14,12 +13,13 @@
A serving agent processes articles as follows:
- 1. It MUST verify the leftmost entry in the Path header and then
- prepend its own path-identity with a '/' delimiter, and possibly
- also the verified path-identity of its source with a '?' delimiter
- (5.6.2).
+ 1. It MUST verify the leftmost entry in the Path-header and then
+ prepend its own path-identity with a '/' path-delimiter, and
+ possibly also the verified path-identity of its source with a '?'
+ path-delimiter (5.6.2).
+
+ 2. It MUST reject any article whose Date-header is stale (see 5.1).
- 2. It MUST reject any article whose Date header is stale (see 5.1).
3. It MUST reject any article that does not have the correct
mandatory headers (section 5) present, or which contains any
header that does not have legal contents.
@@ -29,16 +29,15 @@
and matched against).
5. It SHOULD reject any article that matches an already received
- cancel message (or an equivalent, Supersedes header) issued by its
+ cancel message (or an equivalent, Supersedes-header) issued by its
poster or by some other trusted entity.
- 6. It MUST reject any article without an Approved header posted to
+ 6. It MUST reject any article without an Approved-header posted to
any moderated newsgroup which it is configured to receive, and it
MAY reject such articles for any newsgroup it knows be moderated.
- 7. It SHOULD remove any variant headers (4.2.2.3) from each article
- and MUST, in particular, remove any Xref header (6.16). It then
- MAY (and usually will) generate a fresh Xref header.
+ 7. It MUST remove any Xref-header (6.16) from each article. It then
+ MAY (and usually will) generate a fresh Xref-header.
8. Finally, it stores the article in its news database.